State of the Race: New Mexico -- Still leaning but trending which way?

State of the Race offers quick hit reactions to state or national poll releases in the 2024 race for the White House. For a broader overview of the battle for electoral college votes, check out FHQ Plus in the coming days. It will be where the 2024 FHQ electoral college projection resides.

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Note that in the first few iterations of this State of the Race series that FHQ has not exactly run to where the action is: the seven battlegrounds on which the Harris and Trump campaigns are focusing the majority of their efforts. As in the national polls, the most competitive states have seen a shift in the Democrats' direction since President Biden stepped back from the race in late July. 

However, our sights have initially been set on states that had formerly looked newly competitive after the June 27 debate or the ones that might become more competitive in the event that the pendulum swung back further in the other direction since Vice President Harris was elevated to Democratic nominee. Early evidence out of Virginia -- one of New Mexico's peer states in 2020 -- is that the newly constituted Harris-Trump race may be closer than was the case four years ago. In other words, the Old Dominion has not exactly snapped back into a position in the polling that one might expect given a post-exit uniform swing across the country. On the other hand, Texas did, coming in more in line with where the Lone Star state ended up on election day in 2020. 

Of the two, New Mexico -- at least in this latest look at the Harris-Trump race -- more closely resembles Texas. The Emerson survey of the Land of Enchantment for The Hill -- 51-40, Harris -- finds the vice president behind where Biden wound up four years ago: just above 50 percent (in the results to the multi-candidate question). Meanwhile, Trump also lags the pace he set in 2020 (44 percent) by about the same margin. [Neither are big enough departures from the 2020 results to be considered outside of the margin of error really.]

But there are a couple of broader points to make in the context of this New Mexico survey. First, sure, this is more evidence of a regression to the mean since Harris entered the race. And the thing is that the polling was actually pretty good in New Mexico four years ago. It undershot both candidates by about the same amount and more or less projected the final margin on election day. Additionally, it is noteworthy that Harris and Trump are already in range of where Biden and Trump were in the state at the end in 2020. But second, one should exercise some caution in drawing too many strong parallels in any state to the 2020 race -- at least at this point in 2024. At this juncture, the connection is something that could be considered more coincidental or the mark of a race in a state that has not just not changed that much. 

It is, however, important to kind of get our bearings here in 2024; to establish that in the case of New Mexico, things look like a steady state. 

...pending more data.

For now, news that New Mexico is flirting with pushing into the Strong Harris category is all one really needs to know about whether the state may be drawn into a more competitive position.

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Recent Posts:

State of the Race: Texas -- A repeat of 2020?

State of the Race: Virginia -- Is the presidential contest close in the commonwealth?

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State of the Race: Texas -- A repeat of 2020?

State of the Race offers quick hit reactions to state or national poll releases in the 2024 race for the White House. For a broader overview of the battle for electoral college votes, check out FHQ Plus in the coming days. It will be where the 2024 FHQ electoral college projection resides.

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Texas was one of those states that looked closer in the averages than it ended up being on election day in 2020. Sure, the Lone Star state still tilted in Donald Trump's direction, but as in a number of other states, Biden ultimately settled into a position in the averages that was close to where he landed in the voting while Trump's share was underestimated to some degree.

In Texas, that discrepancy was a little more than four points. And when that was added into the mix in November 2020, it meant a state that looked like it may be a toss up (less than five points) in the projections as election day approached wound up more firmly planted in leaning (five to ten points) territory when the final tally came in. 

So, it was in that context in which FHQ first observed the latest data on the 2024 presidential race in the Lone Star state from the University of Houston/YouGov: Trump -- 49.5, Harris -- 44.6 (multi-candidate question). First, it is worth noting that the outlet previously had a survey in the field in Texas during a late June/early July window that straddled the Biden-Trump debate. While Trump basically held steady between the two, Harris improved upon Biden's position, roughly cutting the Republican's advantage in half. 

That lens is helpful, but at this point in a race that is still settling in following Biden's exit, the context from 2020 is just as important. No, past is not necessarily prelude, but note that 1) the margin in the UH survey is similar to where the 2020 Biden-Trump race ended up in Texas and that 2) both 2024 candidates are in the range of but behind where Biden and Trump found themselves in the state on election day four years ago. 

However, the most important thing, and something FHQ will increasingly discuss as November 5 approaches, is that Donald Trump is more consistently at or above 50 percent in Texas polls now. [Yes, it is still early days in this race and one should use some caution in generalizing from the scant Texas data available at this time.] But that was not a given in 2020. 

Things can change. After all, presidential races have the capacity to be dynamic. Yet, there is a reason the focus is on seven battleground states (not including Texas) and that map expansion from the Democratic perspective is solely focused on North Carolina and not, say, Florida and/or Texas as well. 

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Recent Posts:

State of the Race: Virginia -- Is the presidential contest close in the commonwealth?

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See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 

State of the Race: Virginia -- Is the presidential contest close in the commonwealth?

State of the Race offers quick hit reactions to state or national poll releases in the 2024 race for the White House. For a broader overview of the battle for electoral college votes, check out FHQ Plus in the coming days. It will be where the 2024 FHQ electoral college projection resides.

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Back in the spring the polls of the presidential race in the Old Dominion showed President Biden ahead of Donald Trump. In and of itself, that was not surprising. After all, the president did win the commonwealth by a hair more than ten points in 2020. But noticeably, Biden's advantage there was smaller than four years ago. 

The June 27 debate had the effect of contracting the margin further. Suddenly, a state that had ceased being purple and was just plan old blue in cycles featuring Trump at the top of the Republican ticket looked more competitive. And in some cases, the polling in Virginia in the aftermath of the Atlanta debate found the former president ahead. 

Virginia, then, looked a lot like a number of other states that have been out of reach for Republicans on the other side of the toss ups in the leans category (a 5-10 point advantage) of late. Only, post-debate, states of that ilk -- Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Virginia among them -- seemed to be within the margin of error. In other words, the balance had shifted in the order of states. Trump was at that time in position to claim all of the battlegrounds and push into more reliably Democratic states, nudging his projected electoral vote total well north of 300.

Yet, now that Kamala Harris is the Democratic nominee, Virginia is one of states where one might expect at least some regression to the mean. That is, with Biden out of the equation, the drag he presented should be expected to abate some. 

However, the first survey of the state after the debate did not follow that expectation. If anything, the latest poll in the series from Roanoke College continues to make Virginia look more competitive. The vice president leads 45-42 based on the results of the multi-candidate question, closer than 2020 and even closer than Clinton-Trump in 2016. 

So, what gives? Is Virginia not snapping back into line like the race seems to be in some similar states or in national polls? A few thoughts:

First, the usual caveat: This is just one poll. It is a snapshot of Harris-Trump in mid-August. 

However, compounding matters is the fact that this is not just one poll. It is the only poll conducted in Virginia since Biden withdrew from the race on July 21. As such, there is not a whole lot out there to compare the numbers to other than a handful of surveys that were in the field in the Old Dominion during the snow globe-shaking period in the presidential race between the first presidential debate and Biden's exit. 

That is why the comparison to other similar states is of importance. Actually, that is the only thing left to tether this to. This Roanoke poll of Virginia seems "off" not because there is no preceding poll in the series -- there is, but it was conducted in May and of the Biden-Trump race -- or other recent polls of the state from other firms. Rather, it seems "off" because it shows Virginia diverging from the polling shift/reversion in those other states -- Minnesota, New Hampshire and New Mexico. The data there all point to races that are roughly in line -- the margins, anyway -- with the results from November 2020. 

The bottom line? 

Wait for more polling from Virginia. This survey may be right on the nose, but it will take some more data to confirm that. 

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See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies.